大象传媒

At the outbreak of war in 1939 I was eight years-old and living in a town called
Luton with my mother my father "who had been in the regular army and was an army reserve, had already been recalled for duty in the Scots Guards regiment.He was later sent to Alexandria to fight and was captured by the Germans in 1942 and became a prisoner of war. I did not see him again until he was released in 1945.

My mother did not like living on her own with me so she went back to London and
left me with some neighbors. However I got into some trouble and the neighbours
sent for my mother. I was then taken back to London to live with her and sent to a
local school in Bethnal Green in the East End of London. In the meantime children from London were being evacuated to Luton.

I had only been in the school for a short time when one day in June of 1940, I was
sent to school with a large brown paper parcel, which contained all my clothes.
On arriving at school I had a brown label tied on me, and was put on a bus with all of
the other children from the school. The fleet of buses left the school and took us all to Paddington railway station. As the bus left the school I saw my mother standing on the pavement-waving goodbye to me. We did not know at that time what was
happening to us all.

We arrived at Paddington station and joined hundreds of children from schools all over London complete with teachers we were loaded on to a train and sent of on a strange journey that for me lasted for six years. During the Journey I got a piece of soot in my eye that was very painful for the whole journey. The train traveled for what seemed many hours and finally came to a stop at a place called 鈥淭iverton Junction鈥�. We were then transferred on to buses again, (Hundreds of them) which all took off in different directions. I later found out that they went to different places all over the South of England.

Our buses with 114 children and 6 teachers finally arrived at a school in a little village called Culmstock. On arrival at the school we were given something to eat and drink and sat at the desks. Some kind teacher finally took the soot out of my eye. When we were all seated at the desks, the ladies of the village came into the Classrooms and chose the children they wanted to look after and took them home. Another boy and I (Can't remember his name) were picked out by Mrs. Lucy Pike, (Who I later called Aunt Lucy) and was taken home by her.

On arrival at her strange thatched house in a street called 鈥渢he Cleave鈥�. We were introduced to her son Roy, daughter Jovy and her brother Peter Milton. (Her husband, who had been a Trapper, had died one or two years before). Roy who like me had ginger hair (Perhaps that's why I was picked ) took us to meet one of his friends, Keith Gill (Who also had ginger hair.) and we went of to see some hay being collected at a local farm. On the way we were attacked by some large white birds (Geese) and were shown lots of animals that we had never seen before. (Cows, Sheep, and Pigs) It was a very strange world from the one we had left.

Lucy Pike worked as a weaver in a factory in Wellington. Peter Milton worked as farm laborers for a Mr. Farmer who lived in a big House at the top of Town Hill. Joy Pike, who had left school, was in service at a house in Bradnitch. Roy, who was two or three years older than me, was still at school.
Sometime within the next few days we had to start going school, however the school
was small, (only three classrooms.) and there were 114 of us as well as the village
children. In order to fit us all in it was decide that we would take it in turn and only go to school on alternate days i.e. Village children one day and Evacuees the next day; they also used the village hall as a classroom.

The influx of so many children into the village created many problems, and the local
children in particular felt they had been invaded by a lot of foreigners, this caused
many fights and a type of gang warfare developed between the local children and the
evacuee's, I was in the unfortunate position of not knowing the London children very well, as I had only been at the school a short time, and not knowing the village
children at all, and was attacked by both sides. Fortunately for me Roy Pike stood up
for me and took on any one who hit me, eventually I joined the village gang.
This situation seemed to go on for a long time, however most of the evacuees did not
like village life and wanted to go home to London many attempted to walk home and walked along the railway lines. The police were always fetching them back.Eventually most of them went back and only a few of us stayed until the end of the war.

The other evacuee who lived with us had a sister; she also came to live with
Aunt Lucy. After a short time but they were both taken, back to London by their
mother and eventually were killed in an air raid.

I stayed until the war ended and my father came back from the prisoner of war camp, I got a job when I left school at 14 and worked until 1946 when I was taken back to live in Luton.

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